


Bicycle

by sensitivebore



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 11:42:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensitivebore/pseuds/sensitivebore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carson, Hughes, Mary, and a lesson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bicycle

Elsie looks up with a frown. These ledgers aren't cooperating and the incessant giggling from outside her pantry window isn't helping, not a bit. She looks down at the book, then gathers it and makes her way to Carson's office. Perhaps he'll find whatever tricky number is keeping her balances from adding up correctly. And, she concedes, it'll be a nice reason for a cup of tea, a chat. He's not been to see her this afternoon, which is unusual for them.

She gives her usual meaningless knock and opens the door, only to find his office empty, dim, quiet. There's another high-pitched laugh from the courtyard and she drops her account book on his desk irritably. Whatever shenanigans are afoot outside, she'll put a stop to them; it's only three, after all, and all of the maids and footmen should be busy cleaning, laying tea tables, not dawdling outside in the soft springtime sun.

With a purposeful stride, she pushes through the back door, blinks as her eyes adjust, only to be agog at what she sees. Carson is expertly peddling a bicycle around in circles and making gestures to the handlebars as she does so; Lady Mary is shouting encouragement, nodding at his very serious instructions. Elsie feels her back stiffen at the happy little scene. So this is where he's been. She starts to withdraw back into the house quietly, but Mary has seen her and turns, gestures for her to join them, to come over, and Elsie wills herself to walk the few steps over, to plaster a polite smile on her lips.

"Milady."

Mary is resplendent in riding clothes, or would be if her hat and veil weren't tossed on a nearby crate, if the knees of her jodhpurs weren't dirtied. One of the maids will spend twenty minutes scrubbing at the grass stains, Elsie thinks, but never mind that. His precious Lady Mary has to do as she pleases, heaven forbid she think about the extra work it causes for anyone else.

The girl is gesturing at Carson now as he turns the bicycle at the end of the long path and slowly cycles back toward them. "I got a bicycle today and Carson is showing me how to ride it." She laughs again as he shows off a bit for her, turns a tight circle and keeps the bike perfectly upright while doing so.

Elsie bites back impatience. "I gathered, yes."

Mary lowers her voice conspiratorially. "Don't tell him, Mrs. Hughes, but I've known how to ride a bicycle since I was twelve. I just hit a muddy patch and had a little spill is all." She grins, pink and pretty and graceful, looking every bit as young as her twenty-three years. Elsie fidgets, smiles another vacant smile. Toys with her keys.

She should be softer about the girl, she knows, for Mary has never really done anything to her to warrant her dislike. She is silly sometimes, and thoughtless, but what young girl isn't? She is spoiled in many ways, and flighty, but what else should Elsie expect when the girl had been raised to be a thing, a showpiece, a commodity?

Still. Still.

He brakes the bicycle in front of them. "Mrs. Hughes, I was just showing Lady Mary how to safely operate her bicycle. The last thing we want is any injuries, am I right, milady?" Mary gives him a wide-eyed look of innocence.

"Absolutely, Carson. It is, after all, the first time I've ever ridden. I'm so glad you're here to show me the proper rules." The pair of them bend their heads over the handlebars as he goes into yet another long lecture of how to pull, when to balance, when to correct.

 _Carson_. She hates that Mary calls him casually and affectionately by his last name like that; even Her Ladyship addresses him as  _Mr_. Carson. She doesn't know where the girl picked it up, who told her it was acceptable.

She watches them there, the two of them, and they could be father and daughter on a lazy spring afternoon. If he had a daughter, she would be about Mary's age, pretty like Mary is.

But he is not her father, and it would do him well to remember that. For a brief, ludicrous time, she had thought her resentment of Mary was jealousy, some strange, twisted envy of her close, easy relationship with him, of the breezy affection they have for one another. Hadn't understood it — after all, Mary is a child to him, not a woman. He still gives her sweets from his jacket pocket, heaven help them.

She knows now that it's not jealousy.

Mary will hurt him, in the end. She will break his heart.

She will because she is not his daughter, she is not his child; he is just another servant to Mary, albeit a favored one, and at the end of a long life spent working and toiling for her, he will be put out to pasture and forgotten. The odd visit every few months, perhaps; Christmas gifts delivered by a footman. She will bring her first child around to see him on the occasional summer day. Elsie crosses her arms tightly in front of her, doesn't even bother to form another empty smile when they look at her to share their joke, whatever it is they're laughing at.

He doesn't understand that, but Mary surely should. She should grasp by now that it's best to keep an impersonal wall between servant and master, a safe distance that will protect everyone involved, but she doesn't. Instead, she goes to his office when she's bored and wants to be entertained with a story or a silly sleight-of-hand trick; she hunts him down in the gardens and sits with her chin in her hands, tells him her ridiculous problems. Cries on his shoulder, even, collapses into his solid chest, into his fatherly embrace when she's cooked up yet another heartache for herself. Elsie had seen it that day, had been watching them from the drive.

Had wanted to go and pull him away. Had wanted to shout no, stop, don't. Had wanted to save him from his own softhearted ways.

"One last time, Carson, and then I think I'll have it!" Elsie blinks as Mary rejoins her, as he rides smoothly back down the drive. The girl retrieves her hat and veil, fumbles with it, frowns. The veil is torn and Elsie sighs; Miss O'Brien will have to find time to repair that tonight between dressing Her Ladyship and tending the million other tasks she has.

She watches him and smiles a tender, unknown smile; doesn't even feel her lips curve in that sweet, loving way. He shouldn't be doing this, he should be resting, but perhaps this is a form of rest. She's certainly never seen him this relaxed, this free in his office, or in her own. Has never seen the hard set of his shoulders slope into this loose easiness, never seen his smile so readily available. The hardness leaves her face and the smile deepens, creases her eyes.

If she can't feel it, it's not gone amiss to Mary. Little between Carson and Mrs. Hughes goes under her radar; she knows him better than anyone under this roof and probably even not under it. She does not know Mrs. Hughes, not at all really, but she knows, despite not being a woman of more advanced years, what kind of smile that is. It's the smile that her mother has for her father on their anniversary; it's the soft eyes that Cora sometimes has across the breakfast table from Robert after certain nights; it's the slight tilt of head and the slowly lowered lashes that a woman has when she is looking at a man she loves.

Mary wishes they'd marry. Allowances can be made, lord knows she's had enough made for her own sometimes questionable choices in the past. She wishes for him that this quiet woman, this silent keeper of the keys, would marry him and love him and take care of him. She suspects she already does, just without all of the benefits marriage could give them. Mary doesn't lie to herself, she has no idea how romance and things of that nature work downstairs; surely it must go on. She hears this and that from Anna, from O'Brien, but she doesn't know how or if proper courtships occur. She understands faintly that it's forbidden but she's not sure by who.

Her parents wouldn't mind if there were proper relationships between the staff, she's sure of it. Her father, provincial and old-fashioned as he can be, isn't an unfeeling man. And Cora is an American, for heaven's sake, anything went over there in that strange place.

She brushes at her hat for want of anything better to do. "Mrs. Hughes?"

Elsie glances over, feigns interest. That hasn't gone amiss to Mary either, that the housekeeper doesn't like her very much, doesn't approve of her in some unspoken way. She's been aware of it for some time now, and had tried for quite a time to puzzle it out, to figure where she went wrong with the woman, but she kept coming up blank. Mary has never been rude to her, or demanding, or cross, or any of it. She has tried to make friends, even, only to get the genteel but still cold rebuff. The closed mouth, the shuttered eyes.

"Milady?"

Mary gives a mental shrug. What's it matter, then? She can say what she likes if she isn't going to please her either way. There's no need to pussyfoot around her if her words will always be found wanting. She may as well say her piece.

"It's probably not my place to say, Mrs. Hughes, but — they wouldn't mind, Mama and Papa. About you and Carson."

Elsie's eyes widen, her mouth opens a bit in offense, she starts to put the girl in her place for her assumptions, her impertinence, but Mary just shrugs her off.

"It's your lives, of course, and I'd never presume to tell you what to do. Just — you should know that. They wouldn't mind a bit. And nor would I."

She gives up trying to reattach her veil and just pulls it back over the hat. She wears it back anyway, can't stand to have the stupid thing over her face. Puts her hat on, secures it with a hairpin.

"I don't think Carson would mind, either."

Mary goes to meet him as he slides to a stop and dismounts her bicycle, and though he has no idea why, she kisses his cheek, hugs his neck fiercely the way she did as a child, before she takes her seat, grips the handlebars still warm from his hands, and rides away.


End file.
